Abstract
The above quote by Francisco de Vitoria upholds an idea that has consistently underpinned the moral requirements of cosmopolitan legal theory. It is a principle that demands that justice should be a universal and equal concern for all humanity one which should be impartially applied at the global level as a normative commandment for all human law. It is in relation to this cosmopolitan vision that Vitoria uttered these words, maintaining the normative idea that ‘the whole world has the power to enact laws’.1 In other words, Vitoria argued that natural reason, public reason and law are compatible, consistent and necessary at the global level; that the ethical treatment of all human beings is a moral requirement of universal justice and that it is a further requirement for international law to mirror this sense of mutually consistent justice.
Totus orbis habet potestatem legis ferendi
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Notes
Francisco de Vitoria, ‘On the American Indians’, in A. Padgen and J. Lawrence (eds.), Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 281.
Huge Harris, ‘The Greek Origins of the Idea of Cosmopolitanism’, The International Journal of Ethics 38:1 (1927), pp. 1–10.
Moses Hadas, ‘From Nationalism to Cosmopolitanism in the Greco-Roman World’, Journal of the History of Ideas 4:1 (1943), pp. 105–11.
Diogenes Laertius, The Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1925).
Donald Dudley, A History of Cynicism: From Diogenes to the 6th Century A.D. (London: Ares Publishers, 1937), p. 34.
Zeno of Citium, The Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes, Alfred Pearson (ed.) (London: C.J. Clay, 1891), p. 102.
William Woodthorpe Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization (London: Plume, 1930), p. 73.
Plutarch, ‘On the Fortune of Alexander’, in A. Long and D. Sedley (eds.), The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 429.
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Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations (New York: Hackett, 1983)
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Bartolome de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Nigel Griffin (ed.) (London: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 14.
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Francisco de Vitoria, ‘On Laws’, in A. Padgen and J. Lawrence (eds.), Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 153–204.
Francisco de Vitoria, ‘On Civil Power’, in A. Padgen and J. Lawrence (eds.), Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 40.
Georg Cavallar, The Rights of Strangers (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002), p. 94.
James Brown Scott, The Spanish Origin of International Law: Francisco de Vitoria and his Law of Nations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934).
Francisco de Vitoria, ‘On the Law of War’, in A. Padgen and J. Lawrence (eds.), Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 301.
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Some, like James Tully, question Vitoria’s motives regarding these actions as in the best interests of the natives. However, the context of Vitoria’s discussion is important and seemingly ignored by Tully. For Vitoria stated these words ‘for the sake of argument’, ultimately concluding that he could not assert his position with any amount of ‘confidence’. For he realised the honible results that this position could excuse. He also outlined that this position would be terribly hard to defend and could only be defended if it was absolutely obvious that the native leadership ‘were close to being totally mad’. Even if this madness could be established as fact, Vitoria states that this action could only be legitimate, if it ‘was done for the benefit and good of the barbarians, and not merely for the profit of the Spaniards’. For Tully see, James Tully, Strange Multiplicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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Archibugi, Daniele (1995) Immanuel Kant, ‘Cosmopolitan Law and Peace’, European Journal of International Relation 1:4 (1995), pp. 429–56.
Emeric de Vattel, The Law of Nations (Indianapolis, IN: The Liberty Fund, 2000).
In doing so, Kant rejected the principles of the contemporary natural law tradition as a ‘pure illusion’ and maintained that natural law scholars such as Grotius were’ sony comforters’ and apologists for the supremacy of poor state behaviour under a misappropriated form of Roman jus gentium. See Immanuel Kant, ‘On the Common Saying: This May be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice’, in Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 92.
Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981).
Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 106.
Garrett Wallace Brown, ‘The Laws of Hospitality, Asylum Seekers and Cosmopolitan Right: A Kantian Response to Jacques Derrida’, European Journal of Political Theory 9:3 (2010), pp. 308–27.
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, M. Gregor (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 121.
Mary Gregor, ‘Kant’s Approach to Constitutionalism’, in A. Rosenbaum (ed.), Constitutionalism: The Philosophical Dimension (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), p. 71.
Garrett Wallace Brown, Grounding Cosmopolitanism: From Kant to the Idea of a Cosmopolitan Constitution (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 110–17.
Antonio Franceschet, Kant and Liberal Internationalism: Sovereignty, Justice and Global Reform (New York: Palgrave, 1990)
Garrett Wallace Brown, ‘Bringing the State Back into Cosmopolitanism: The Idea of Responsible Cosmopolitan States’, Political Studies 9:1 (2011), pp. 53–66.
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Daniele Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)
Ronald Tinnevelt and Gert Verchraegen, Between Cosmopolitanism Ideals and State Sovereignty: Studies in Global Justice (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006).
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Brown, G.W. (2013). Between Naturalism and Cosmopolitan Law: Hospitality as Transitional Global Justice. In: Baker, G. (eds) Hospitality and World Politics. Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290007_5
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